Knit Bits: A Look at a Fashion Design Pro, Stylecraft Seeks yarn Line Input and How to Be a Good Knitting Student

The New York Times recently ran an interesting profile of Vladimir Teriokhin, a former ballet dancer in Russia turned sought-after high-fashion knitwear designer. He makes sweaters for the likes of Oscra de la Renta and Marc Jacobs, as well as his own line, called Spencer Vladamir, which retails for $800 to $2,500 per garment at Barneys. Gwyneth Paltrow has called him the Sweater Whisperer, and he’s known for using chunky yarns and large-scale designs with lots of cables.

British yarn manufacturer Stylecraft Yarns is looking for help picking colors for the expansion of a couple of its yarn lines. The company has more than 80 shades in its Special DK weight yarn line, and it wants to add some of the colors in Aran and DK weights, with the help of fans. They’re taking nominations for favorite yarn colors through the end of February, at which point the 12 favorites will be announced. Then voting will take place to determine the six favorites that will become new colors in both lines (check Facebook for more details). Voting will run through the end of March and the new colors are expected to be released in October.

Red Heart has a new free collection of 10 knit and crochet patterns for the little ballet dancer in your life. From little sweaters to leg warmers and bun covers, there’s lots of cute stuff here.

CouponBox recently did a survey in which they asked people about the indoor hobbies they most wanted to try in 2016, and knitting ranked number one, with 16 percent of the 3,500 Americans surveyed saying they’d like to give the hobby a try. Second place was rock climbing, followed by reading, yoga and soccer, which I didn’t realize was an indoor hobby, but still. Hooray for new knitters! (Click the link for the full range of responses.)

Finally, Franklin Habit has been a popular knitting teacher for years, and before that he was a student, so he has lots of thoughts about how those of us who enjoy taking classes, whether at a festival, conference or our local yarn shop, can be better knitting students. I won’t give you the whole story (and this is only part one, focusing on what to do before class), but it amounts to knowing what you’re getting into and bringing what you actually need for the class, including any homework the teacher asked you to do. Seems simple enough, right?

[Photo via CouponBox.]

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I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

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